The glow of the late-afternoon Roman sun warmed Buffy’s kitchen, and Giles’ voice buzzed distantly in her ear. “The prophecy is quite clear,” he said. “It must be tonight, and it must be-”

“A Slayer and a vampire, making with the horizontal hokey-pokey. Heard you the first time. You realize that this is total patriarchal objectifying crap, right?” Hey, look, Willow was rubbing off on her. “Saving the world with my vagina?”

Over the crackling line, she heard Giles clear his throat. “Of course, it need not necessarily be you...”

“But hey, pretty convenient, right?” She allowed herself a grin. “Who knows, you might not have needed to call.”

Now she could practically hear him blush, and she smirked. Mortification of the Watcher? Still a Buffy Summers event in the Slayer Olympics. Besides, it served him right. She heaved a long-suffering sigh. “The sacrifices I make. Tell your Council money people I need a bonus for this.” On Giles’ sputter, she hung up.

She glanced at herself in the window glass, smoothed a stray wisp of hair and straightened her shirt. Then she slipped into the darkened living room, to Spike, stretched out on her sofa: the vampire in repose.

“Hello, lover,” she said as she slid onto him. One instant he was whipcord-taut beneath her, and then he melted, his angles meeting her curves in ways that were still too new – again – to be taken for granted.

“Not that I’m complaining...” he began, but she leaned in to nibble at his lip, which shut him up. It usually did, she was rediscovering.

*squeal* This is so exciting to me! I'm totally with you on the being over the Shag or Die thing (except that I still love "Persephone"). I thoroughly approve of you continuing to rub its ridiculousness in everyone's face! YAY!

Somewhere on my hard drive I have a Barbverse fragment about some demon trapping Buffy and Spike in a magical cage and proudly informing them that the only way out is to (DUN DUN DUN!) do the nasty with their mortal enemy, and they get into a big argument over whether on not they still qualify as mortal enemy enough to break the spell... *g*

Yes. Most of the point of this fic is that even in as silly a situation as this one, she is still the Slayer and she is still In Charge. (The rest of the point was to play with the "Shagging one's mortal enemies leads to relationships" trope. *g*)

Hee. It just occurred to me, as I was writing you that comment, that Shag or Die is always about forcing together two people that would Never Ever otherwise, and what a (narrative!) anti-climax it'd be if they were already, yanno, together. And it amused me.